The situation in Syria today, now occupying the top slot on the international agenda, is about more than just the U.S.-Russia political compromise on chemical weapons. It is also about the interethnic and sectarian tensions driving Syria’s civil war. These tensions are echoing well beyond Syria itself, into the countries of the Greater Caucasus region, where it could easily create new risks and challenges for the United States, Russia and the world.

That the civil war should reverberate so far beyond Syria’s borders might seem odd at first. The independent states of the South Caucasus, as well as the nine Russian constituencies of the North Caucasus (including the Krasnodar and Stavropol krais), have no common borders with Syria. Nevertheless many threads connect them with to the Middle East, and Syria in particular. The South Caucasus states border on Iran and Turley. Iran has a border with Armenia and Azerbaijan (including access to the unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh Republic) that is more than 400 miles long. The total length of the borders of Turkey with the South Caucasus republics is more than 300 miles long, and today there are anywhere from 2.5 million to 7 million descendants of Caucasian ethnic groups living in the Turkish Republic. Besides these demographic and geographic connections, the national governments in Tehran and Ankara are both playing active roles in the Syria situation: Iran has consistently supported the Bashar al-Assad regime, while Turkey has just as forcefully advocated its overthrow and expressed its readiness to support a U.S.-led intervention—and perhaps even lead an intervention of its own.

There are complicated dynamics to bilateral relations between the South Caucasus states and their neighbors. Turkey is a strategic ally of Azerbaijan, supports Baku’s position on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, and has no diplomatic relations with Armenia. The process of Armenian-Turkish rapprochement, beginning with the promise of “Football Diplomacy”  in September 2008 and continuing with the signing of the Zurich protocols on mutual normalization in October 2009, had stalled by the spring of 2010 and is now losing steam. The bilateral Azerbaijani-Iranian relationship is also rather fraught, despite the relatively high degree of religious solidarity between the two sides (nominally Shi‘a Muslims compose 65 percent of Azerbaijan’s population). Azerbaijani officials regularly criticize Iran for supporting radical Islamist forces inside Azerbaijan. The Iranian clergy (the key political element of the Islamic Republic) pretends to play the role of supranational spiritual leadership for all Shia Muslims. Thus, the question of Southern (Iranian) Azerbaijan has become another sore point in bilateral relations. It is no coincidence this topic was widely discussed during Azerbaijan’s presidential election earlier this year.

Tehran is extremely sensitive to foreign interference in its neighborhood. The U.S. presence in the Caspian Sea and the South Caucasus is most threatening in this regard. For this reason, Iranian politicians and diplomats are skeptical of the so-called Updated Madrid Principles of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict resolutions. Tehran also dislikes the military-technical cooperation between Azerbaijan and Israel, especially the possibility that Azerbaijani territory could be used for strikes on Iran or Syria. 

The Greater Caucasus and Middle East are also connected by the fact of U.S. military cooperation with many states in the region. In particular, the strategic partnership between Georgia and the United States is worth noting here. Nowadays the Georgian military contingent in Afghanistan, which is slightly more than 1,500 personnel, is the largest force contribution by a non-NATO ally. Tbilisi was also materially involved in operations in Iraq. By 2008, 10 percent of Georgia’s military personnel were involved in supporting U.S./NATO operations abroad.

The role of Azerbaijan in Afghanistan, though slightly different from Georgia’s, is also important. According to James Appathurai, NATO’s Special Representative for the South Caucasus and Central Asia, Azerbaijan provides a third of all Alliance cargo from Europe to Afghanistan. In December 2011, Azerbaijan replaced the Georgian airline, Sky Georgia, as a supplier of NATO’s transportation needs. Although Armenia has positioned itself as a strategic ally of Russia (it is a member of the Collective Security Treaty Organization and has pledged to join the Russia-led Customs Union), it still tries to maintain equilibrium with the West by participating in several partnership programs with NATO.

While the Caucasus countries have reached their second decade as independent states, the general situation in this region is far from stable and predictable. Of the eight ethno-political conflicts in the former Soviet Union, six have occurred in the region. Further, three of the four de facto entities that emerged from the fall of the USSR exist in this region. These turbulent conditions provoke the interest and engagement of both regional and global actors. Though the geopolitical situation in the Caucasus already receives significant attention by scholars, it is mostly viewed through the prism of the U.S.-Russia rivalry. This approach is too reminiscent of a Cold War-style analysis no longer appropriate for the 21st century. Today Caucasian connections to neighboring areas like the Middle East loom largest in the geopolitics of the region.

All of the above should help us understand how the Caucasus countries evaluate the Syria situation. Perhaps the best way to understand each country’s approach to the problem is to look at its position on a possible intervention.

In Georgia, there is a political consensus in support of intervention. The two primary domestic political opponents, President Mikheil Saakashvili and Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili, are largely in agreement. Both of them supported the idea of a U.S. intervention this August. This might seem somewhat surprising given Georgia’s relationship with Iran, which was until very recently on a warming trajectory (likewise, until very recently Georgia’s relationship with Israel was cooling off). In 2010, for instance, largely thanks to the efforts of the pro-American president Mikheil Saakashvili, Tbilisi and Tehran agreed to establish a visa-free travel regime, and Georgian-Israeli relations, especially after the Fuchs-Frenkel case (involving the criminal prosecution of two Israeli entrepreneurs), was crumbling.

However, Bidzina Ivanishvili has expressed a desire to restore Georgia’s damaged relationship with Israel, and has stated that his June 2013 visit to Israel was the “most successful” of all his foreign trips. He has also said that the two countries should abolish entry visas and re-establish a strategic partnership. Just after the June 2013 visit, Georgia abolished the visa-free regime with Iran. This decision angered Tehran, which considered it a gesture designed to please Tbilisi’s masters in Washington, DC.

The Azerbaijani position on Syria has been much more circumspect. Despite the fact that Baku is a strategic ally of Ankara, the Azerbaijani authorities are afraid of direct or even indirect involvement in the Syrian crisis. There are sectarian divisions in Azerbaijan; the majority of the country is Shi‘a, but there are also growing political and cultural ties with Sunni-majority Turkey. If Azerbaijan were to establish a definitive policy on Syria, it could create even more tensions in its relationship with Iran. And the Russia factor, while it is usually overestimated, is nevertheless also present in Azerbaijan.

Armenia has particular interest in the Middle East foremost because of the Armenian ethnic community in Syria. Last September Armenia’s President Serzh Sargsyan said the events in Syria were directly linked with the security of his country. Striking a similar note, a Telegraph article described ethnic Armenians’ engagement alongside other Christian minorities in the Syrian civil war. Although the Armenian government would not wish to encourage a massive influx of refugees, it cannot ignore the plight of ethnic Armenians inside Syria.

Another important issue is Turkey’s willingness to participate in an intervention in Syria. This would create a highly undesirable precedent for Armenia, which is involved in its own conflict with Azerbaijan and which has no diplomatic relations with Turkey. It would not be an exaggeration to regard this dynamic as one of the factors that convinced Armenia’s leadership to join the Russia-led Customs Union rather than pursue integration with the European Union. The European Union has no effective instruments of hard power in either the Middle East or the Greater Caucasus. Yerevan, then, prizes security over any potential economic benefits of European integration.

Russia is a special case. For Moscow, Syria is about more than just the Caucasus factor. Russia, like China, opposes foreign military interventions and sees maintenance of the status quo as the best option, even if not always the ideal one. In the post-Soviet space, however, Russia has broken its own rule—in Georgia (1993, 2008), and in Tajikistan’s civil war (1992–97).

All that said, the Caucasus is nevertheless an important part of Russia’s motivations for its Syria policy. Moscow fears that Bashar al-Assad’s fall would strengthen the position of Islamist radicals not just in Syria, but in the rest of the Middle East as well. It also fears that Assad’s fall would augment Saudi Arabia’s and Qatar’s power and influence in the region. These things, Moscow fears, would further destabilize the turbulent Russian region. Today, Qatar is already aiding the Syrian opposition; in 2003, it offered its territory as a safe haven for a Chechen separatist leader, Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, who lived there as a personal guest of the Emir. Russia cannot ignore (nor should we) the fact that the Alawite-dominated Syrian regime has for years deterred radical Islamic groups (the Russian media refers to them as “Wahhabis”).

Russia also cannot afford to ignore the fact that many North Caucasians have been found in Syria fighting for the opposition. The leading Syrian opposition force composed of foreign fighters, Kataib al-Mujahirin, was led by the ethnic Chechen Omar al-Shishani. (Shishani was highly likely killed this September.) It is thus no accident that Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin underlined the importance of the Caucasus in the Syrian context in his recent comments  to Russia Direct.

There is certainly plenty of legitimate debate today about who is the guiltiest party in the Syrian crisis, and who is primarily responsible for the escalation of violence. But any policies arising from that debate should take into account the fact that the collapse of the Assad regime would echo well beyond Syria’s borders—into the Greater Caucasus and beyond.